Granger, Harmon, Nagamootoo and their version of Millie, the macaw

Apr 18, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Joe Harmon was the chief of intelligence in the army in the seventies. David Granger achieved the rank of brigadier. This experience their colleagues lack. The exception is Nagamootoo. He may not have had the kind of experience working in a sensitive, power institution like the army but he was around as a practicing politician in the seventies holding cabinet office in the PPP government for several years after 1992.
The rest of the PNC and AFC crew are relative newcomers without any long-standing careers except Trotman and Ramjattan in law. It is extremely worrying that people like Granger, Harmon and Nagamootoo could display such arid and awful incompetence since March 4 when Mingo started his descent into electoral skullduggery.
For four consecutive weeks, conspirators in GECOM, the PNC and AFC made one ugly blunder after another that are below their dignity and open them up to permanent ridicule. There is no question that after this crisis is over, people like Roxanne Myers, Clairmont Mingo, Keith Lowenfeild, Claudette Singh, Vincent Alexander, the entire leadership of the PNC and AFC, and the remnants of the WPA, will never be able to repair their tattered credibility.
Time will pass and they will hope people forget but I cannot see this happening. Even if by some miracle the APNU+AFC remains in power, these people’s standing in Guyana would disappear. Mr. Granger has to know that if he retains the presidency, he will end up being the most disrespected head of government the British West Indies ever produced.
What took place in the 2020 elections in Guyana after the voting was done has no parallel in modern democratic countries and particular in Guyana where we had rigged elections in 1968, 1973, 1980 and 1985 plus a rigged voting in the 1978 referendum to have a new constitution.
There are no elements in those fraudulent landscapes that come close to resembling what characterize the ongoing efforts to rig the 2020 poll. How could Granger and Harmon with their high military background and Nagamootoo with his immense political experience allow themselves to be laughed at in the way they are planning to continue this rigging? Simply put; no human mind is capable of making such asinine mistakes.
So many asininities stand out that you do not know where to begin but I think three inventions were so comical that they virtually convinced those who didn’t want to believe that GECOM and APNU+AFC planned the rigging. Now we have a fourth. The three are – Mingo’s use of a cardboard and bed sheet to tabulate the results of a national election in the 21st century.
The second one was the lady who filed a writ to stop the recount that her party leader asked CARICOM to validate. Nothing wrong with what the lady did. She exercised her democratic right but the very lawyers for GECOM and APNU+AFC took on the lady’s case to stop the recount. Surely man, Granger has no more credibility after this comical fiasco.
Thirdly, Lowenfield actually and consciously put down on paper, and consciously submitted this paper for the world to see in which he proposed 156 days to count just under 500,000 ballots. My contestation is that he had to show Alexander, Granger, Harmon and the rest of the crew his paper. To think none of them said that it would appear to be the most laughable thing to come out of Guyana since the cussing macaw, Millie, from Guyana at the 1967 Canadian Expo. And Granger, Harmon and Nagamootoo allowed Lowenfield to publicize his version of the cussing macaw.
Now the fourth one. I am assuming that Michael Granger who compiled the dossier that he submitted to the PR firm, JJ&B, is a close relative of the president. Questions are bursting out about this dossier. He listed the president as a US citizen. Was this a Freudian mistake? Is Granger in fact a US citizen? If he is not then do we have another display of asinine behaviour by the election conspirators?
What makes this equally comical as Mingo and his bed sheet and the lady and her writ is that Granger, Harmon, and crew (crew meaning Raphael Trotman, Nagamootoo and others in the PNC/AFC war room) had to see the dossier that Granger compiled. Did they not see that the president is listed as a US citizen? It may well turn out that this was just not another display of asininity and idiocy. It may have serious consequences for Granger. Surely, given the legal consequences, the US should tell the nation if Mr. Granger is a citizen or not. It is not sufficient for the PNC to deny it.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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